1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to an apparatus and method incorporating biofeedback training into a computer-generated multi-user virtual environment, and augmenting a computer user's sense of immersion in the computer-generated multi-user virtual environment by adding physiological interactivity to the multi-user virtual environment and by influencing the scoring of performance in the multi-user virtual environment with measured values of a user's physiological functions.
2. Related Art
Because of the association of certain human physiological states with the optimal performance of certain human activities and behaviors, or the attainment of superior states of health, biofeedback training directed to self-regulating such physiological states seeks to optimize the performance of their associated actions, behaviors, and states of health, thereby facilitating mastery in action and well-being. For example, a self-induced reduction of an elevated heart rate and blood pressure, typically associated with anxiety, may be expected to move a person into a state superior focus with respect to a challenge and its resolution, which state is better suited for victory over an opponent in real or simulated combat or completion of a real or simulated task.
Biofeedback training techniques for physiological self-regulation are fundamentally grounded upon repetition and the frequency of repetition, techniques for which persons have varying and limiting tolerances, particularly if their practice of biofeedback is undertaken in an environment that is not motivating because it fails to engender excitement, enthusiasm, challenge, stimulation, or curiosity. The absence of such motivating feelings often results in noncompliance with biofeedback training—a persistent and pervasive problem that has limited the effectiveness of biofeedback training incorporated into videogames and computer simulations to date.
Biofeedback training programmed into videogames or computer simulations has been limited to single-user videogames or single-user computer simulations, wherein the user is made aware of only some of his or her own monitored physiological functions, and the user's interaction with the videogame or computer simulation is modulated only by the control of his or her own physiological functions. In effect, the user competes only with himself or herself, and this has been found to limit commitment to play and participation, with a concomitant decline in biofeedback-mediated self-regulation of the user's physiological state.
The present invention makes biofeedback training more inherently self-motivating by incorporating biofeedback training into a computer-generated multi-user virtual environment (“MUVE”) and augmenting the computer-generated audio and video interfaces that create the sensation of immersion in a MUVE with a physiological user interface that enhances the users' sense of immersion in the MUVE by:
[i] physiologically modulating the physical control inputs used by each of the players in the multi-user videogame or each of the participants in the multi-user computer-simulated task; and,
[ii] incorporating measured values of physiological functions of each of the players in the multi-user videogame or each of the participants in the multi-user computer-simulated task into the score by which performance in the multi-user videogame or multi-user computer-simulated task is graded; and,[iii] subject to rules governing participation in the multi-user videogame or the multi-user computer-simulated task, making the performance scores and a physiological performance profile of each player or participant visible or invisible on the output devices of other players or participants, thereby creating physiologically competitive and cooperative incentives in the multi-user videogame and the multi-user computer-simulated task.